LTS

Yeah....... Until I can see the 5 on 5 game play and see if they've updated ANY of the AI I am not going to bother. I have EA Access so I've been able to eventually play the last two NHL games (usually around April) and they still suffer from the same ridiculous AI. From what I've seen they keep adding different ways to play the same game. It's all cosmetics and nothing of substance. I love that they "learned" from their Star Wars Battlefield 2 debacle of pay to win. Get people to pay millions of dollars so they can wear a new t-shirt in their pond hockey game. It works, but it doesn't do anything to improve the actual game. So, the AI will continue to do the most ridiculous things on Earth (but only your teams AI, not the CPU AI). I love hockey.. and I still play them.. and next April when NHL 19 hits EA Access I will probably give it a shot. They destroyed the game in NHL 14, they made it WORSE in NHL 15, and they've not been able to get back to anything good yet. They just keep adding fluff. They're more focused on how many HUT packs I can get rather than worrying about the fact that a billion HUT packs won't change the fact that a 99 rated defenseman will stand there watching an offender bury a one-timer from 4 feet away never moving to cover him or that my defender will take the puck from behind the net and skate it INTO my goalie and the puck will go in my net or that my goalie will kick it into his own net or watch the puck flop around in front of him whereas the opposition goaltender (vs CPU) will drive 10 feet out of the crease to cover the same puck. Blah... I am sure you didn't want to know how I really feel.. ?

Let me try that again... <sarcasm>Big surprise.</sarcasm> I initially planned on using the following, but you said you didn't get the GIFs.. ?

Meh.. he's listed as a DH on the site I looked at for stats. Like I said.. baseball is irrelevant to me. The Yankees even more so. ISO = International Standards Organization or In Search Of?

That's accurate. It's always intended and should be JIF... ? I've never said it any other way.

At first I thought we'd all be spared some awful color commentary on football broadcasts... then I really read the thread title. Big surprise.

Nope. Because I don't pay attention to baseball. I was absolutely just using him as a bad example. I've stated why I hate the DH... because it only makes sense to allow it at every position.. why stop at 1? It's all good.. in the end.. it's baseball. ?

But it was just used it describe pitcher effectiveness... ?

Right.. Giancarlo Stanton is hitting .279, hasn't hit above .300 and makes $25M per year to be a hitter and only a hitter. What a waste... ?

Right, so why not apply that to everyone? Do you want your stud CF to tear his hammy running the bases? I'm assuming you are okay if your pitcher gets drilled while on the mound because that's his job... similar to a CF tearing his hammy catching a routine fly ball... I understand WHY people love the DH. I just don't understand why we don't apply it everywhere then. Not mandatory, but allow the defense and offense to be separated?

Just wanted to see if you understand this one. ?

Meh. It's the game. Get better at hitting. Also - Chris Davis makes $23M this season and is hitting .159. He's not a pitcher. Yep, I know, it's rare for that to happen. A fluke even... ? Bottom line.. I hate the DH. The game is played by the 9 guys you put in the field. Making exceptions for one of them leads me to question why you can't just make exceptions for all of them. Again.. meh. Also, it's baseball, so overall I don't even care.

Having read the article they do quote Amy Pfister... she's a smaller broker-owner. It's possible that it's less an overall staged article. Of course any real-estate journalist is going to have connections, especially to those who sell big ticket homes. If I really cared I woudl dig into it more to see if Howard Hanna had exclusive rights to selling those homes. There are a lot of co-development deals that work that way.

Except in those circumstances where it's not an instant out and it changes the game. So yeah, it's pretty cool. Can't stand the DH. I feel like if you support the DH then you should just support a game where you can field 9 players on defense and 9 players on offense and they don't have to be the same. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't expanded more given the propensity for Americans to value scoring over actual game play.

Quite possibly the biggest problem is not knowing his long term intentions or him having stated that he wants to play in Tampa. The Senators are already on record this season for not wanting to trade in division (Hoffman) and it didn't work out for them. Add that to the fact that perhaps the only bidder is TBL and it makes it easy for Yzerman to low ball offers. The deadline return might actually be better because a GM might find his team in a better spot than he thought near the deadline and be willing to give up more to give his team a push in the playoffs. Right now there are a lot of GMs that hope their team plays to their expectations.

I could see that sentiment. The problem is, in this subscription world we are migrating to, is that keeping track of all subscriptions is a pain in the butt. Of course that's why it's a popular business model. They want people to sign up and forget they have it and not use it. I think it depends on WHY you hate paywalls more than just hating them. In addition, I don't think that people hate that journalists need to be paid, I think they just hate the hassle of having to directly pay for it. Unfortunately the "free rider" advertising supported model is failing miserably (well, unfortunate for those people), except for the data miners who use all those advertising views, etc. to build predictive analytics models of our lives. There's a difference in saying you hate a paywall and not finding it f value, I think. If you don't find it important enough to spend money on it you probably don't find it important enough to hate either. I mean, why waste energy hating something that has low importance to you?

It's worth it just to see the reaction of people to a jelly bean called Minion Farts.

Not that I go too deep into a lot of this stuff... but.. Sometimes the educated are the most susceptible because they have the capacity to imagine that what we perceive as reality might not be reality. There's a point where you look around at how things operate in life and you begin to wonder if you are not meant to be part of that. As though there is something else that would make more sense because what you see, day to day, makes no sense. Along comes Polly and boom.. the right message, at the right time, and hooked. Some people find escape in the purchase of gas station lottery tickets. Some find it in Costa Rica at a cult complex.

That's exactly what it is... It's also 100% accurate besides more than fair. You're likely to see HH ads on TBN website as well. The newspaper is a huge real estate advertising medium. That has not changed. The number of people who look forward to home sections is amazing. I spent 8 hell months working as the Vice President of IT for Nothnagle (bought by Howard Hanna a few months after I left). The rest of the senior leadership team still runs the local operations and this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff they spent their time working on.

That's insane. I would never go back there. The front brakes on my Kia Optima cost me about $400 at Midas. The mileage services are total scams. Never get them. If it was a brake service then they would have done all that work anyway replacing the pads and rotors. I've done my own brakes in my driveway using a jack in less than an hour. I just don't want to always do it and for the minimal difference Midas charges me... I pretty much let them do it now. $900 is absolute usury. And yes..I was joking with the whole server thing. Although I did get a heavy pour on the whiskey I ordered at one place... hmmmmm.. ? Also, just replaced all 4 tires on my car for $530. Pirelli P-Zero All-season Plus. $120 to mount and balance them... (I order from TireRack and I swear by Pirelli now) Uh yup... but like I said. You get a good place and it's better to just let them do the work. And yea.. they definitely are ripping people off.

Nope. It was purely the jelly bean segment of the show. All him as a human, not necessarily has a hockey player with canned responses.

What work was done on the brakes and on what kind of car? $1000 is pretty steep. Also, I was in Virginia last week and was called honey or sweetie by quite a few of the servers and I wasn't spending $1k on dinner. ?

There was a tweet in an obscure Minnesota blogger that included a drone view of his new place of residence... let me dig it up... Here it is..

Your assertion is that rather than pay a player now for production that fits the team he will wait and hope a prospect develops and then when they earn the long-term contract at the same age (3-4 years from now) he will pay it or not pay it? There's zero evidence that Kane would re-sign in Buffalo, let alone at contract terms he received in San Jose. There's really no evidence that Botterill wanted him on the team. I don't think that plays into the Skinner decision. Botterill sought out Skinner in a trade. Skinner wanted to come here. There may be ulterior motives for both but at the very least these two sought each other out. The ROR trade could be seen as a move to shed salary at a peak point to obtain a scorer and other players to fill lower roles for a year or two. It's very possible that the return for ROR next year would not have been as good as this year. There are many unknowns with regards to ROR. Was he a problem in the locker room, etc? In any event, $7.5M might be too much to pay for your eventual 3rd line center. Get while the getting is good and if the other unknowns were a factor, so be it. Also, ROR was not a Botterill player. I would expect that Botterill and Skinner will have a discussion on where his role on the team would be long-term and what contract that dictates. He's not TOO old for the team and he fits a role that no one else does at the moment. If, by some miracle, there is a LW that shoots up the depth chart from the farm club then perhaps he trades him, gets value, and uses that to get another player next year. Either way, I don't think there's enough evidence to support the assertion "Botterill won't spend the money."

That was a great way to spend 19 minutes of my day. Thanks for digging that up!

I don't think anyone is taking Larsson, Girgensons, or Bogosian from the Sabres. I expect that they will find themselves sent down to the AHL with the hopes that someone picks them up on waivers. Bogosian won't be sent down. He'll either play when he's healthy or he'll be on IR again. Even if Larsson or Girgensons are moved, it's not going to bring back ANY return that will improve the lineup, now or in the future.